Fiction
I know what Phil means, Gran ventures. "There's just something about it..." She explains that it wasn't until she realised just how much enjoyment Cecil got from planning and keeping busy that she was able to give the go-ahead on her place.
There's something about this little speech of hers, the helpless flutter of her hands, that reminds Phil of when they first arrived, his mother's lapse into embarrassment when enumerating all the changes. She hadn't wanted such an extensive overhaul, he would bet on it. Cecil had had his way. There's no question the man has money and skills, but it seems to Phil that this self-proclaimed man of action is about as adrift as anyone could be.
Vera -- enunciating each word carefully -- tells Cecil that she thinks it's just marvellous that some men are so productive. She describes her house, the crazy layout, ramshackle porch, the outdated plumbing, tells him the place could sure use some TLC. "But couldn't we all?" she giggles, whisking her hair back from her flushed and glowing face. It's hard to believe she's the same person Phil brought to Gran's.
Cecil asks her if the wall between the dining room and living room is a load-bearing wall, and when she shrugs he says, "Phil, is the wall..."
"Oh, he wouldn't know," she tells him, laughing.
Phil studies Gran's ceiling, the broad swirls in the plaster that, he supposes, his wife and daughter will want on their own living room ceiling. "None of this is for sure yet," he says, but Vera's enthusiasm isn't at all deflated, such is her faith in Cecil.
"You'll have to excuse me for a bit," Gran says rising. "I'm just going to go and get a head start on dinner."
Behind closed eyes, Phil climbs the tree of his childhood, looks across to the far shore, the real world where he's lived all these many years. Along the bank, alligators bask in the sun. One of them smiles at him and slides into the shadows. He lets his mind drift south to Cecil's wife in Vermont, a woman dead to her husband's whereabouts -- unless she's lying there fully conscious of the wreckage that is her life. From the woman's bedside, Phil hears Vera drumming her nails on the sofa arm. "This is what he does," she says to Cecil. "Even with things really looking up for a change, he sleeps. ...Phil, Phil, are you with us? See what I mean? He's drifted off to fantasy land again. My god, the ideas he comes up with for employment! An animal bed and breakfast, for Christsake. All of them just...castles in the air."
